222: You’re Not Confused. You’re Too Close To It.

 Welcome to Shoot It Straight, the podcast for women building businesses and lives they actually want. I’m Sabrina Gebhardt, and around here we believe in clarity over hustle, alignment over burnout, and giving yourself permission to want more, more ease, more beauty, more income, more space to live. So if you’re ready to grow without losing yourself in the process, you’re in the right place.

Welcome back to the Shoot It Straight podcast, my friends. I am gonna share a couple of stories, and they’re, like, personal things that I have done in, in the last 90 days that have happened to me, and they illustrate today’s point so perfectly, and that is that you know too much about your own business to see it clearly.

Again, I’m gonna share some personal stories. I don’t want you to hear that as, like, an insult. It, this, it, j- it, it is what it is. Friend to friend, it’s, it’s, it just is is what it is. This is one of the reasons why I talk about having business besties and, you know, working with coaches and being surrounded by other people that are entrepreneurs and understand things.

It, it just it is what it is. You are too close. You are too close to see things clearly. When we are feeling stuck, confused, unsure, our gut instinct is to go find more information, right? It’s to search that topic on YouTube. It is to Google that subject. It is to try and find somebody that made a video about it on TikTok.

It’s trying to find… Like, we’re downloading a freebie. We’re trying to get more information to help ourselves out of it, and it’s actually just making it worse because you’re already too cl- close, and then you’re, you’re just dumping more in, and you’re just getting more confused and more stuck. So I want to kinda talk through…

I’m gonna give you some examples, and then I’m gonna talk about four, like, symptoms of this problem that maybe you will recognize yourself in. So before I tell my examples, I’m gonna tell you an example of, uh, how this went down exactly in my mastermind currently, the current run of women that are in the mastermind.

I’m not gonna name names or anything, but generally speaking, in, in very light terms, one of the women in the program… And this was over 30 days ago. This was in the first six weeks of the program. One of the women on one of our calls, we were talking through pricing, and, you know, different people wanted to raise their rates and are hung up on various things.

And one of the women on the call said, “My work isn’t worth that.” And she really was stuck in, like, “I can’t possibly raise my rate to this particular number because I, m- I just f- my work’s not worth that. What do you mean?” And immediately, a peer in the group answers, “Okay, so you’re wrong. I’m just gonna leave that here.”

And just literally chimes in and was like, “Nope. Nope, that’s a false statement.” The call moved on. I obviously tried my best to coach her through it. Other people chimed in with their thoughts and their opinions as well. And what happened next was she raised her prices. We convinced her to do the thing, and she raised her prices.

And what happened? She was still booking clients at her new, higher prices. She had… was leaving money on the table. Great. Total win, immediate win from that call. We were hel- able to help her through that. But the example from this is she probably never would have gotten there on her own because it was a belief that she had, “My work is not worth that amount.”

There’s no book she could read. There’s no amount of journaling she could do. There was no, like, watching of a video or reading a freebie. It… Like, she had to be talked through that with outside perspective to get to the other side Here’s my examples, okay? That was a student example. I have two examples of my own.

I, uh, was struggling with something, and so I booked a call with a coach who I have worked with before. And so it was just one of those things where I’m not actively working with her in that pr- in this way, but I was like, “Hey, I need your support on this. Can we get on a call?” So paid her, booked a call. In the course of an hour, she helped me get unstuck with the thing I was stuck on.

She knows my business, knows my audience, knows what I’m leaning towards and, and what my goals are, and was able to help me create a plan with action steps to move forward with what I was stuck on. And here’s the thing, I didn’t learn anything new on that call. I didn’t walk away with a, like, mind-blowing new strategy or a hack or anything new, just like my student didn’t learn anything new about her prices.

It was just needing an outside perspective, an external pair of eyes to come in and say, “Have you looked at it this way? Have you thought about it this way?” And I left that call with this coach feeling so much momentum, so much clarity. I literally had all these notes. I knew exactly, okay, I need to do this and then this and then this.

And I could not have done that on my own because I was too close to it. Another example. Um, this was most recently. I have a coach… Or excuse me, I have a friend who is also a coach, and I was feeling unsure about the direction that I wanted to take something, and I wanted a little clarity on, like, why I was feeling that way.

And I really was like, “Am I feeling this way because I am pulled? Like, it, is it a gut thing that I’m being pulled to do something new and different, or is this something else at play?” And I didn’t wanna make any rash decisions. And so I reached out to her and I said, “Hey, can we Voxer back and forth over the next few days?

Can you, like, help me through this to see if we can get somewhere before I do anything crazy?” And so we did. So we spent a week Voxering back and forth and, again, fresh eyes, fresh perspective, removed from the emotional attachment. She had an understanding of my business and my needs and my audience, and she knows me.

She was able to cut through what I thought I was feeling and get to the heart of what was actually causing the thing. I would not have gotten there on my own, could not have gotten there on my own. And quite frankly, I was very close to just making the rash decision, if I’m being honest. I was very close to making the rash decision.

Thank goodness my intuition was like, “Actually, maybe you should reach out and ask for some help before you do that.” And I’m glad I did, okay? Really, truly, truly glad I did. In all three of those examples, you are hearing how You need somebody on the outside. You feel confused, you feel unsure, you have questions, and you’re stuck ruminating.

You’re stuck in the, well, let me find more information or let me do this thing or I don’t know, maybe I should do this or maybe I’m just not gonna take any action at all. You’re suffering in one way, shape, or form and it’s not really that you’re confused, it’s that you’re just too close to your own business.

I have, like, four, again, symptoms, let’s say, air quotes around that, that can… why you’re feeling this way, okay? So let- let’s just get into those. Number one, every offer that you created feels like an essential part of your business because you created it. You remember the season in which you created it.

You remember how the first time you launched it, it was so popular with your audience. You remember how the first time you booked somebody to do that thing, it brought in a new amount of money that felt exciting. You have an emotional history attached to these offers, and therefore, they… you have to do them all.

You could not possibly set any of them down. They all must make sense for your business because there’s an attachment there, right? You’re too close to them. It would benefit you to have some fresh eyes look at it and say, “Okay, I understand, but from the outside looking in, this is what I’m seeing. This doesn’t actually make sense,” or, “I don’t think this is actually the clients that you wanna work with,” or, “The pricing on this is kind of confusing.”

Fresh eyes can come in without that historical emotional attachment to the things that you’ve created and give you that perspective, that outsider’s perspective, okay? I wanna talk to you about something for a second. I see this all the time in the industry, photographers who are good at what they do.

They are genuinely talented, but they still feel like they’re one slow season away from questioning everything they’ve ever done. They are still making decisions from a place of scarcity. They’re still running their businesses in a way that quietly exhausts them. I know that feeling because I’ve lived it, and I also know what it costs to stay there longer than you have to.

Root to Rise is my mastermind for photographers who are done waiting for things to click on their own. It’s a high-touch group program, and it’s one I’ve been running for years, which means it’s been refined, tested, and built on what actually works. Not a theory, not what worked for someone else. What is working for photographers in real businesses at real stages of growth.

The women inside Root to Rise aren’t just growing their revenue. They’re changing how they think, how they make decisions, how they show up. That’s the work, and that’s what makes the results stick. The next cohort isn’t open yet, but the waitlist is, and that’s where you wanna be. Waitlist members get first access, more details, the chance to have a conversation with me before the doors open to anyone else, and a discount at enrollment.

If you’ve been circling this and wondering if it’s for you, that’s your answer. Get on the list, sabrinagebhart.com/mastermind-waitlist. The link will be in the show notes. Back to the episode. This next one is super common. A really common example that I see all the time is women are justifying an overcomplicated process that you would never actually recommend somebody else do, okay, quite frankly.

But it’s been the way that you do things. It’s the way you’ve always done it. It’s the way you built your business, the way you built your client, um, experience, the way you put together that offer, whatever. It’s complicated because that’s the way it’s always been, and you justify that it’s the right thing and it needs to continue happening and it’s the only way to do things.

But if you were sitting down with a business bestie, you wouldn’t actually like sell her on doing it the same way. You know what I mean? Like, it, it doesn’t make sense. Like, it’s that whole adage of you wouldn’t be your own client. And I know you have something like that in your business. I know that I do.

And most of the women I coach, when I point things out, being that out- outside perspective, that outside set of eyes, I will try and show them like alternate ways. And oftentimes their instinct is to justify themselves. “Well, I mean, it has to be this way, and here’s why.” And then we go back and we unpack it and we realize there’s not actually a have to about anything.

It’s just the way that you’ve always done it. Similarly, what I hear often is that Y- y- when you’re trying to get yourself out of a messy situation that feels confusing, where you don’t have clarity, all of the ideas, air quotes, or strategies that you’re coming, coming up with, they all seem to make sense even though they all contradict one another.

It’s like, “Oh, well, I could do this, and that actually sounds great and, like, it would work. Oh, but I could also do this.” Totally different direction, totally different strategy. That could also work. Oh, but what about this third option? And they all actually contradict each other and maybe get different results, but they all sound good and make sense.

You’re in the middle of that. You’re, like, in the middle of a tornado at that point. Your, your brain is firing too many ideas. They probably are all good ideas, but you’re lacking the clarity of somebody to help you pull back and say, “Time out. Take a breath. What’s the end goal? What are we actually working towards?

Let’s figure out what makes the most sense instead of b- having all of these contradictory ideas,” right? This is a perfect example of more information making things worse. When we’re stuck in that tornado spiral of ideas and contradictory things and like, “Well, this could work, and this could work, and this could work, and this could work,” and what we tend to do is just wanna absorb more and more and more, right?

Oh, I found this new coach. I’m gonna go watch all of their free content on YouTube. Oh, I’ve started following this new person on Instagram. I’m gonna go binge all of their coaching reels. Oh, there’s a free quiz download, uh, from this other coach. I’m gonna go take that and see what the results tell me.

Like, you’re actually making it worse ’cause you’re piling in information and content on top of this, like, tornado that you’re spiraling in, right? Another way that I see this playing out is that you are continually shopping for another answer. So maybe you come up with an answer, a solution to a problem, but you don’t like it, so you keep looking for the next one, but you don’t like that one either, so you keep looking for the next one, and then you keep looking for the next one.

And then you find yourself similar to the last example in this little bit of a tornado where you’ve got all of these ideas, and none of them feel right, and what you actually need is somebody to come in from the outside who’s got a outside view of your business and an understanding of who you are and, and whatnot and say, “Okay-” “These five definitely don’t make sense, and here’s why.”

Like somebody to point out the things that are so glaringly obvious but you are missing because you’re just too close to it. So when you have a situation where you can get external eyes on your business, on your problem, on your situation, you are able to get unique solutions. A coach can help you recognize patterns, can help you recognize seemingly unrelated things, can help you recognize that you are actually getting in your own way, or you’re making things harder than they need to be, or you’re solving problems that haven’t happened yet, or whatever.

Okay? A coach can see from the outside very easily Through the mess, through the weeds. And a good coach will help you find your specific patterns and your specific needs and give recommendations that are unique to you and are not like cookie cutter advice, right? The cookie cutter advice is the advice that you get off of YouTube.

The cookie cutter advice is the advice you get from a freebie. The cookie cutter advice is what you hear from large platforms. Oftentimes, o- on Shoot It Straight here you get generalized advice because I can’t coach one person. I mean, I, I could, but we’d have 4,000 episodes, okay? It’s more generalized advice.

It’s what works for most people. That’s not to say that there’s not good stuff here. There is. There’s great stuff on YouTube. There’s great stuff in so-and-so’s freebie. But oftentimes when you’re stuck, it’s not the cookie cutter advice you need. It’s something unique, and that’s why it’s not working.

That’s why you haven’t been able to solve your own problem, because you’re not fitting something that’s cookie cutter. There’s something unique about it, okay? And a coach can help you cut through that. Another great way that you can get outside eyes is being in a room, whether that be a retreat or a pod or a, you know, an online virtual community or anything like that, any kind of space where you’re in a room, you are able to get in front of other people.

You are able to meet and connect with people. You are able to see people who are like you, who are struggling like you. And oftentimes in these situations, you’re put in small groups where you’re able to get a little bit more intimate. You’re able to ask the questions. You’re able to support someone else, and then they can support you.

In Root to Rise, we have pods, small group pods that the group is broken into, so they not only get the private community within the mastermind of all the women and also the group calls that we have where they’re live face-to-face, asking questions, answering questions, supporting one another, but the small group pods.

They’re, they’re on Voxer together in groups of three and four and checking in multiple times a week, able to support each other and help see through the mess. We have multiple spaces built into that program, the pods, the online community, the calls, and the retreat, because a room of people who are your business besties can help cut through the mess and help you see something that you couldn’t see before I wanna end with this.

Is there someone in your life who knows the depths of your business and how you’re getting in your own way? Do they know your prices? Do they know your goals? Do they know your excuses? Do they know how you get yourself stuck? And if the answer is no, that is a gap that I want you to fill and to prioritize filling, whether that is with a finding a business bestie and being super intentional about that, joining a program like Root to Rise, hiring a one-on-one coach.

I don’t care how you do it. But if you cannot answer yes to that question, you have a huge gap that is holding you back Having somebody who knows the depths of your business and how you get in your own way and get stuck is an incredibly valuable tool to moving forward, okay? And having your best business, your best life.

Needing an outside perspective doesn’t mean that you are weak. It doesn’t mean that you are incapable. It doesn’t mean that you are unsuccessful. It just means that you have reached some sort of limit to what you’re allowed to see. And again, I shared an example of a student in my program, and also two examples of myself.

You will always find yourself in situations where you’re too close to it. You will never outgrow that. So it’s so important to find those relationships who can support you through those times. If you are interested in learning more about Root to Rise, the doors for 2027 open very, very soon, okay? Just get on the wait list.

You’ll be the first to hear about it. The wait list gets first dibs on booking the retreat, which has limited spots. The wait list also gets a discount. So if you’re even remotely interested in the program, like get on it, ’cause then you’ll get a discount. I mean, obviously. But we have all of this built into the program on purpose.

Again, the pods. We have co-coaches. I didn’t m- didn’t mention that. We have co-coaches. We have two calls a week. You get access to me every single week. We have a private community. We’ve got an optional retreat. There is so much accountability. There is so much relationship built into this program so that people will see you and will make sure that you are not stuck.

They will make sure that you have the clarity. It is such a great room to be in, and I would love to see you get on the wait list. The link is in the show notes. It’s also sabrinagebhart.com/mastermind-waitlist. And I would love to hear from you. If this episode resonated with you, send me a message over on Instagram at xo.sabrinagebhart.

Otherwise, we’ll see you next week. Thanks so much for listening to the Shoot It Straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at sabrinagebhart.com/podcast. Come find me and connect over on the Gram at xo.sabrinagebhart. And if you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you’d hit that subscribe button and leave me a review.

Until next time, my friends.